Post what you've done so far!

This forum is of course to discuss Dorico’s performance improvements and feature suggestions. However, it could be encouraging to the team to know what is being done with the software. I will start myself with what I have accomplished since its release. I also have a full plate of work ahead! I’m curious to see what others have done with this exciting new software.

  1. 8 part mass horn arrangement of the “Hockey Theme” for a Toronto flash-mob led by Sarah Willis of the Berlin Philharmonic. (It actually made television news, and so was certainly one of the first non-promotional filmed performances of a piece written with the software)
  2. An edition of dance excerpts from Rameau’s “Pygmalion” for future performance
  3. An 18 minute original work for full orchestra and narrator on a text by Lucy Maud Montgomery (premiered in December)
  4. A simple collection of Christmas Carols for orchestra for sing-along purposes.
  5. A viola duet for friends.
  6. A multiple flow edition of Handel’s Messiah in view of a performing edition for myself. Was done using Photoscore and xml. Text and additional markings will be added this summer.
  7. Two arrangements of Leonard Cohen Songs (Take this Waltz and A Singer Must Die) for large orchestra and vocalist, to be performed by Steven Page next month.
  8. A short arrangement of a French Canadian folk tune for the Winnipeg Symphony
  9. The Aria and 18 variations of the Goldberg Variations just for training (learned a lot!)
  10. Several loose parts for cello (for my wife) from works by Locatelli, Sibelius, Vivaldi and others, which required transcription for legibility as they were either poorly copied facsimiles or created with partify.

Your turn!

Wow - you have done a lot! Here’s mine:

  1. A piece for solo trombone and electronics, almost entirely unmetered. I had first done this in Sibelius, and redid it in Dorico to get acquainted - for unmetered music the difference is night and day.
  2. A short solo piano piece in memory of my late mentor.
  3. An arrangement for voice and piano of the African American spiritual “Steal Away.”
  4. A transcription of “Song to the Moon” from Dvorak’s Rusalka for the group Pink Martini.

Disclaimer: none of the following are “finished” in the sense that I would publish them, but most of them are private “test projects” anyway. I include those that have progressed to a stage where one could get to publication with a reasonable push.

  • Mozart’s entire Singspiel Bastien und Bastienne, with piano reduction
  • the Three-Dances-At-The-Same-Time scene from the Don Giovanni Act One Finale
  • a set of about ten virtuoso piano variations
  • a twenty-five movement flute piece
  • a small seven movement score for violin and piano, with the violinist participating in two piano-four-hand movements
  • a wind quintet with two players playing from another position for the second half of the piece
  • a proof-of-concept of the first pages from Bernstein’s MASS

That MASS excerpt was an amazing piece of Dorico work!

Which reminds me: as interesting as it is to read about what has been done, it would be even more interesting to browse some of these scores. I am aware that this won’t be possible most of the time, but a few links to some final PDF files would sure be appreciated.

I don’t mind doing this for some of the stuff. I will later tonight or tomorrow

It might not be suitable for everybody, but ScoreExchange.com now accepts pdf files.

Even though score exchange is a good idea, I don’t mind sharing these pdf’s here. At Alexander’s behest. I’ve chosen three “specimens” in letter size.

In the case of the Bach Goldberg (about 18 variations) and the Rameau, repeat numbers are of course not notated. In the case of the Rameau, they will likely be available by the time I have to use it for performance, which is not for another year. The Bach was simply an exercise, and I only used the ornaments presently available to Dorico. By the end of doing the Bach, I was getting quite proficient and one of the variations took me 15 minutes, especially after I found a way to copy and paste a voice in to the lower staff, change its voice stem direction and paste it back to the top staff after transposing it. Some of those canons went pretty quickly! But the French Overture in the middle took a while, I admit. In the Rameau, I replaced the cross with a short trill sign. Also, in the Bach, I sometimes used the Breitkopf as a guide, but as I actually find it sometimes difficult to read. I also used the Bärenreiter as a guide on occasion.

The original composition (more like a series of variations on carols for incidental music purposes) worked very well with Dorico. The musicians really appreciated the quality of the engraving.

A Christmas Inspiration:

Goldberg Variations excerpts

Pigmalion dance excerpts (This is the old French spelling, btw):

I just purchased the program last week so nothing nearly as monumental as what you all have done! Just an Ave Maria for voice and piano (regular score and a vocalist score with minimized piano part) and a transcription from plainchant into simplified modern notation of the Pueri Hebraeorum (for Palm Sunday) for mass tomorrow.

It’s very interesting wrapping my head around the way Dorico does things differently than those programs we knew and loved… That said, there are some things that I’ll never want to live without again (copying exact staff spacing onto other pages!!! yes please! :stuck_out_tongue: ).